Google Tag Manager was announced today at eMetrics in Boston and MoreVisibility is one of a select group of companies that has passed a rigorous screening to be recognized by Google as a Google Tag Manager Specialist. So if you need help planning and executing your deployment, we’re here to help!
In this post we’ll try to answer these questions:
What is Google Tag Manager?
Why deploy Google Tag Manger?
How do I add Google Tag Manager to my site?
What else do I need to do to use Google Tag Manager?
What is Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager is a free TMS or Tag Management solution. Rather than copying and pasting multiple conversion codes and tracking pixels on your site, or getting IT to add this work to their queue every time you launch or change a marketing effort, with Google Tag Manager you simply place one container tag on every page of your site and that’s it! Now when you need to add conversion coding, you just log into your Google Tag Manger account, add the coding in the interface and your container tag will pull this new conversion code onto the pages you specify.
Why deploy Google Tag Manger?
Google Tag Manager allows Marketers to quickly deploy tags and conversion coding for new initiatives — without IT resources. In addition, the ability to define when your tags fire gives you added flexibility and control! For example, maybe you only want to retarget visitors to your online store that placed more than $100 of merchandise in their cart. Simply set a rule that defines this interaction and now only these high value visitors will be placed in your remarketing audience!
How do I add Google Tag Manager to my site?
This is the easy part.
That’s it! You’re now ready to add your tags and publish them to your container.
What else do I need to do to use Google Tag Manager?
Is it really that easy to deploy? Well yes and no. Just like there is more to using Google Analytics than pasting the snippet on your site; certain interactions and data need to be defined to get the most from Google Tag Manager. The most important piece is defining the data layer. What is the data layer? Well I’ll tackle that in another post this week, but suffice to say that the data layer collects information and makes it available to the tags and pixels in Google Tag Manager.
While Google Tag Manager is a powerful and flexible tool that allows marketers to quickly deploy and measure new initiatives; the key to a fully leveraged installation is a proper measurement plan that considers:
Once your plan and data layer are in place and your container is live and published, you are on your way to rapid reaction and deployment of all your online marketing measurement needs!
There’s a familiar saying that goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road can get you there.” This is especially true in the world of paid search campaigns. When running a paid search campaign, it is important to have conversion coding active on your website, without it your campaign will be flying blind.
Conversion coding is a small snippet of code that is placed on the final page of a conversion process. Most of the time, the final page is the “thank you” or “confirmation page”. For example, if your site sells products, then once a customer makes a purchase, they receive a confirmation page. The conversion coding should go on this page. If you ask people to sign-up for a newsletter, then the conversion coding should go on the thank you page that they receive once they sign-up for the newsletter.
Search engines such as Google and the Search Alliance offer conversion coding for free. Once a campaign is created in these engines, the conversion coding can be retrieved and placed on the thank you or confirmation page. Conversion coding and analytics work hand in hand. Some may say I have Google Analytics or Omniture, why do I need conversion coding? Although analytics programs will show conversions, it’s good to have checks and balances for paid search campaigns.
A key benefit of implementing conversion coding is to be able to see what’s happening, just by logging into the engine. If there is a glitch with the analytics program that is being used, the conversion data within the engine will act as a backup. Also, within the engine there are reports that can be run that can include specific data about conversions. Not only that, it’s great for on the spot optimization of paid search campaigns.
The value of conversion coding is that it’s a benefit which can help your company analyze data to make sure the overall goal is being attained. If your company isn’t utilizing conversion coding to track conversions, then now would be a great time to start.
For any person using Facebook for contextual advertising, it has been a major source of frustration that it did not have conversion tracking or a means to determine if visitors were completing any actions on their site. Not having the option to track conversions limits the amount of analysis and optimization an advertiser can do to improve the performance of their ads. Using an analytics platform was one way to track certain goals that were completed; however, not every advertiser uses analytics.
Conversion coding enables advertisers to track certain goals as well as make strategic decisions on performance of ads. Testing different ad copy or targeting is beneficial for marketers so they can actually measure what is performing the best. On the flip side, they can also see what isn’t performing and make decisions to optimize the campaign. Larger search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask and Business.com all offer conversion coding.
Facebook recently released a very limited beta program for conversion tracking. Not much is known about this beta, but it clearly shows that Facebook is looking to be a contender as a major advertising platform. By giving advertisers this tool, Facebook is making it easier to show how well ads can perform.
No longer is Facebook a valuable market for just for building brand awareness, it is moving toward becoming a portal in which advertisers can expect to see conversion driven success.
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